A dispute over whether it is safe to reopen Iraq’s renowned archaeology museum in Baghdad has cost the head of the country’s archaeology board her job. The battle over the Baghdad museum, closed since before the U.S. invasion in 2003, is one of several sticking points in the ongoing debate over how to manage the country’s cultural heritage.
Iraq’s new minister for tourism and antiquities, Qahtan al-Juburi, visited the Iraq Museum on 3 January and demanded that the museum be opened to the public by mid-February, according to several Iraqi and American sources. The acting head of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, Amira Edan, argued against the minister’s proposal for security reasons, says Donny George, former head of SBAH now teaching in the United States, who spoke with Edan about the incident. Edan had previously offered to resign because she lacked the confidence of the ministry, says another source who requested anonymity, but that offer was ignored. Following Iraqi media reports of her opposition to reopening the museum, however, al-Juburi accepted her resignation on 11 January. Neither the ministry nor Edan responded to requests for interviews.
The ministry is controlled by a Shiite party eager to see U.S. troops depart Iraq, and several U.S. and Iraqi archaeologists say that reopening the museum would be a potent political symbol. “That would be a message to the world that everything is fine and that the Americans can leave,” says George, who believes that unlocking the museum doors “is a terrible thing to do.” Another researcher familiar with the situation, however, says that opening some of the galleries poses no major threat because “there is a good security system installed.” But the source adds that the SBAH chief should have a say in the decision and that her dismissal “is disturbing.”
Al-Juburi also refused to allow a team of Iraqi archaeologists, including Edan and her replacement, Qais Hussein Rashid, to visit Washington, D.C., this month to discuss how to spend a $700,000 grant from the U.S. State Department to help develop a master plan for the ancient Mesopotamian capital of Babylon, once the world’s largest and richest city. Babylon has suffered from years of neglect, shoddy reconstruction, and damage during recent occupation by U.S. and Polish troops. Provincial authorities are eager to open the fragile site to tourism, but archaeologists want to preserve it.
Provincial authorities have also asserted their claims to ancient objects discovered by farmers and construction workers, although by law such objects must be sent to the national museum for cataloging and analysis. “But each [province] hopes to become independent, so they won’t send in the antiquities,” says an archaeologist close to Edan, who has pleaded with the provinces to cooperate.
Safety first. Amira Edan led visiting dignitaries and Iraqi officials, shown here in the Assyrian gallery, on a November tour of the closed and heavily guarded Baghdad museum.
Another source of tension is the fate of ancient Jewish manuscripts captured during the invasion. Widah Na’srat, a member of the Iraq Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigations Department, told the London-based publication Al-Hayyat on 18 January that he suspects U.S. contractors of smuggling some of the manuscripts to Israel. He did not elaborate but said he would visit Washington soon to investigate the matter. Jeffrey Spurr, a Harvard University researcher, says the manuscripts were housed in Saddam Hussein’s secret service headquarters and damaged by water during the fighting, then frozen and flown to Texas for conservation in the summer of 2003 with the permission of SBAH. They are now in a Maryland facility, he says, but have not been cataloged.
Science 30 January 2009: Vol. 323. no. 5914, pp. 570 – 571 DOI: 10.1126/science.323.5914.570b
Science-2009-Lawler-Iraq_Museum_May_Reopen_Amid_Controversy-570-1_1.pdf